Digital ceremony for recipients of the Goethe Medaille 2020
The Goethe Medal is traditionally presented in Weimar on August 28, the birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This year, the Goethe-Institut, in collaboration with broadcaster Deutsche Welle, is hosting a digital ceremony for a global audience. Bolivian multidisciplinary artist Elvira Espejo Ayca, British writer Ian McEwan and South African writer, publisher and curator Zukiswa Wanner will be introduced by means of short films and in discussion with Goethe-Institut President Klaus-Dieter Lehmann. Three renowned commentators will pay tribute to the recipients: Barbara Göbel, an ethnologist and Director of the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin (Elvira Espejo Ayca), journalist and author Franziska Augstein (Ian McEwan) and writer Zoë Beck (Zukiswa Wanner). Musical interludes will be provided by students and teachers from the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar, who come from Mozambique, Brazil, Australia and Bolivia and will be led by Tiago de Oliveira Pinto; they will present compositions that they have chosen and created especially for the medal recipients. The ceremony will be hosted by Deutsche Welle presenter Karin Helmstaedt.
Watch the ceremony, which will last around 50 minutes, on Friday, August 28, at 11 am (CET) on the www.goethe.de/goethe-medaille website and at #GoetheMedaille2020 on youtube/goetheinstitut.
An English language stream will also be available at youtube/DWBooks.
The Goethe-Institut Goethe Medal will also be covered by the DW channel Deutsch at 11.15 am (CET) / 9.15 am (UTC), and DW Deutsch+, at 9.30 pm (CET) / 7.30 pm (UTC). The TV magazine show Arts.21 will also present the recipients in a special edition on August 29, and in its English, Spanish and Arabic editions.
The Goethe-Institut’s Goethe Medal, which is an official honour of the Federal Republic of Germany, recognises outstanding contributions to international cultural exchange. The recipients are outstanding examples of the power of critical, reflective art and the theme of the 2020 awards, “Accepting Contradiction – the fruits of contradiction.” Christina von Braun, Committee Chair and Cultural Studies expert at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin, emphasizes, “In 2020, the Goethe-Institut is honouring two women and one man who have all advocated a culture of contradiction. Whether they are a pro-European campaigner like Englishman Ian McEwan, or a defender of indigenous traditions like the Bolivian museum director, singer and poet Elvira Espejo Ayca, or a women’s rights activist like south African writer Zukiswa Wanner, what they all have in common is that they have shown courage and demonstrated the political power that culture can wield.”
About the 2020 recipients
Elvira Espejo Ayca, born in 1981 in the province of Avaroa in the department of Oruro in Bolivia, grew up in an indigenous village community. From an early age, she rebelled against the tradition and convention that excluded her from higher education and precluded her from obtaining a professional qualification. Her decision to pursue her education and career led her to break with her family and her village. In 2004 she studied art at the Academia de Bellas Artes Hernando Siles in La Paz. She has never forgotten her indigenous roots, and weaves them continually through her work and her projects. In 2005 she co-lectured on unwritten Andean languages for the Duke en los Andes programme, working with musician Álvaro Montenegro to record traditional songs and dialogues on indigenous and urban musical instruments. From 2010 to 2011 she was a contributor to the Das Potosí Prinzip exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt cultural centre in Berlin, which subsequently toured in Spain and Bolivia. She then joined the Board of Directors for the Institute of Aymaran Languages and Culture (ILCA) and became Director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore (MUSEF) in La Paz, turning it into one of the most important cultural centres in Bolivia.
Ian McEwan, born in 1948 in Aldershot in England, was the son of a Scottish army major and grew up amongst other places in Singapore, Libya and Germany. He studied English Literature at the University of Sussex in Brighton and the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Today, Ian McEwan is a highly renowned contemporary author and has won numerous literary prizes, including the Man Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Twelve of his stories have been turned into films, including Atonement (2007), which received seven Oscar nominations. Ian McEwan was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000. In 2011 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society. He has also been the recipient of prestigious awards in the German-speaking world, such as the Alfred Toepfer Foundation Shakespeare Prize for his life’s work (1999) and the German Book Prize (2003). Over 20 of his works have been published in German by Diogenes Verlag.
Zukiswa Wanner was born in 1976 in Lusaka, Zambia and is a writer, journalist, publisher and curator. After attending school in Zimbabwe, she studied journalism at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu. Since 2006 she has been an author and a promoter of African literature. In addition to fiction for children and adults, she has published reportage, essays and travelogues, which have appeared in international newspapers and magazines (The Guardian, The Observer, Juice, Elle and many more). She co-authored the Nelson Mandela biography, A Prisoner’s Home (Penguin, 2000). Together with the Goethe-Institut in Nairobi, Kenya, she developed the transnational series Artistic Encounters, which brought African writers into discussion with other artists. She also curated the Afro Young Adult project and has established short story writing workshops. The renowned Hay Festival selected Zukiswa Wanner as one of its preeminent African authors in 2014. In 2018 she founded her own publishing house, Paivapo, together with Angela Makhola. She is currently curating the virtual literary festival, AfrolitSansFrontières, , in which sixteen writers from ten African countries are participating.
About the Goethe Medal
The Goethe Medal was established by the Executive Committee of the Goethe-Institut in 1954 and recognised as an official honour by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1975. The awards ceremony takes place in Weimar on Goethe’s birthday, 28 August. The Goethe-Institut also organises an accompanying programme in collaboration with the Kunstfest Weimar festival. Since the medal was introduced in 1955, it has been awarded to a total of 354 individuals from 67 countries, including Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Bourdieu, David Cornwell aka John le Carré, Sir Ernst Gombrich, Lars Gustafsson, Ágnes Heller, Petros Markaris, Sir Karl Raimund Popper, Jorge Semprún, Robert Wilson, Neil MacGregor, Helen Wolff, Juri Andruchowytsch and Irina Scherbakowa.
The Goethe Medal Committee
Dr. Franziska Augstein (journalist, Süddeutsche Zeitung),
Prof. Dr. Christina von Braun (Chair and committee spokesperson, Cultural Studies expert, Humboldt-Universität in Berlin),
Dr. Meret Forster (Music Editor, BR-Klassik),
Dr. Anselm Franke (Curator, Director of Fine Art and Film Department, Haus der Kulturen der Welt),
Dr. Ina Hartwig (Head of the Frankfurt am Main Culture Department, literary critic),
Prof. Dr. Ursula von Keitz (Professor of Film Research and Film Education, Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf),
Ulrich Khuon (Artistic Director, Deutsches Theater),
Eva Menasse (author),
Moritz Müller-Wirth (journalist, Die Zeit),
Elisabeth Ruge (author, publisher and literary agent),
Representing the German Foreign Office: Assistant State Secretary Dr. Andreas Görgen (Director of the Culture and Communications Department),
Representing the Goethe-Institut: Prof. Dr. h.c. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann (President), Johannes Ebert (Secretary General).